The dog days of summer can often be a slower time for small businesses, unless you’re in a travel-related or back-to-school related business. Not every small business has an audience that can use its products and services year-round. But slow times are a great opportunity to catch up and revisit your long-term marketing goals or revive some unfinished marketing projects.

The slow season is also a good time to take a look at the big picture of your marketing and sales process, and make corrections and improvements. Evaluate what part of your business you think needs the most work and allocate a majority of your time to enhancing it.

Here are a few proven strategies that can be done during slow times that will serve you well year round:

Review your website and purge outdated information and broken links.

Make sure your website has plenty of calls-to-action (CTAs) for people to stay in touch with you by subscribing to an email list or a blog. If you haven’t hopped on the blogging bandwagon for your business’s marketing, don’t worry, it’s never too late to get started.

Make sure your contact information is up-to-date.

Make sure your marketing materials both print and digital, are not only up-to date, but also consistent.

If you have good customer relationships in place, the slow season is also a good time to follow up with your existing customers to see how they’re doing and ask for referrals, remembering to reward them accordingly.

Tell customer stories and get testimonials that are detailed and personal, and use the person’s full name if possible.

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